At least according to the Director of Markets at Ireland's Central Bank. The Irish Independent, reporting on Gareth Murphy's speech about virtual currencies:

“Central banks, financial regulators, ministries of finance, fiscal authorities and statistical authorities should be interested in virtual currencies,” he says.

They are a reality because of “the ease with which transactions can occur between counter-parties located anywhere in the world, the relatively low cost of effecting payment and transmitting funds and the fact that many large technology companies are household names that are trusted”.

In other words, bitcoin is not a fad. It, or virtual currencies like it, are a likely part of an evolving economic payments infrastructure.

“As a virtual currency starts to permeate economic activity, regulated financial service providers such as banks, insurance companies and asset managers may find themselves having to adapt to this new environment in order to maintain market share,” said Murphy.

This is quite an extraordinary thing for a senior central bank official to say. It also puts economic commentators’ weekly predictions of bitcoin’s imminent doom into a clearer perspective.

The Bitcoin train is picking up some serious steam again, but it's doing it out of the mainstream media, for now.